Clean chemistry at work

Organic chemistry could hardly get cleaner; chemists at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee have devised a new technique — cheap, flexible, and waste-cutting — to synthesise valuable double-bond-containing molecules directly from renewable, plant-or bio-derived alcohols. Developed by a team led by Debasis Banerjee, Professor of Chemistry, the method does not rely on petroleum-derived starting materials or expensive metal catalysts and leaves only water and hydrogen gas as byproducts.

In their study (bit.ly/Debasis-olefins) published in Nature Communications, the scientists reported a greener way to produce olefins and dienes, a class of molecules and critical building blocks for complex chemicals used to make medicines, fragrances, plastics, and speciality chemicals. Olefins and dienes are currently synthesised from petroleum-based starting materials using old methods such as the Wittig reaction or Mizoroki-Heck coupling, which need expensive or toxic ingredients and go through multiple reaction steps. The class of phosphine-based catalysts, for instance, is not just expensive, but also strong cellular and mitochondrial poisons. The prevalent techniques produce ample chemical waste products.